The present invention relates to a system which has a major application in analyzing fast transients, whereby the signals to be analyzed can have a duration between e.g. 30 picoseconds and a few nanoseconds.
For the analysis of very fast signals, it is known to a streak scanning camera associated with a television camera in a solid state circuit as the analyzer. The streak camera receives the signal to be analyzed in optical form. If the signal is of another type, e.g. electrical, it is first processed in an input interface circuit, which converts it into a calibrated optical signal. The different optical signals to be processed are transmitted via fibre optics to a streak camera. This intermediate optic can be constituted by linearly juxtaposed fibres in order to form the light slit on the input photocathode. Deflecting electrodes are controlled in order to produce a scan perpendicular to the line resulting from N juxtaposed optical channels on a fluorescent screen at the output of the tube. The resulting image formed from N vertical traces then makes it possible, by analysis with the aid of a television camera and a processing circuit, to study the time variation of the corresponding signals.
French Patent application No. 84 19196 of 12.14.1984 describes a photon sampler derived from streak cameras and arranged so as to process an optical analysis channel at the input. According to this solution, the tube is provided at the input with a photocathode having reduced dimensions and is directly associated with an image detector in a solid state circuit constituted by a single detecting strip oriented in accordance with the light trace to be detected. The assembly can be realized more compactly and has numerous advantages, particularly due to the fact that the number of samples corresponding to the number of detecting strip elements is higher than that supplied by a solid state matrix.
The object of the invention is to provide a transient analyzing system for which the signal to be analyzed can be electrical or, if it is not electrical or optical, is firstly converted into an electrical signal before being supplied to the analyzer in optical form, whereby the analyzer is advantageously of the aforementioned type used for the analysis of a single channel.